Stuck on them

Love for snakes is understandable, but an obsession with the ticks and mites that live on the creepy-crawlies?! For 21-year-old Shantanu ...

Love for snakes is understandable, but an obsession with the ticks and mites that live on the creepy-crawlies?! For 21-year-old Shantanu Goel, it8217;s the parasites living on snakes that interest him.

When Goel completed his B.Com last year, he realised that economics and accounts were not for him. 8220;I have always been interested in wildlife. I have attended the Worldwide Fund for Nature WWF camps at Melghat and enjoy bird-watching. But it was when I volunteered at the Katraj Snake Park that my curiosity about parasites was aroused8221;.

8220;At the snake park, I noticed that the snakes had parasites on them 8211; arachnids with eight legs, ticks small round creatures that maybe visible to the naked eye, mites more spider-like and not visible normally8230;8221;

Goel collected the samples and decided to study them further. With guidance from H.R. Bhatt parasitologist, formerly with the National Institute of Virology, he realised that there was not much study done on snake parasites. 8220;I find them absolutely engrossing. In fact, I am planning to give the entrance exam at the Wildlife Institute of India to be qualified to study them further8221;.

To learn about ticks and mites, Goel obviously has to catch the snakes first. This he learnt from the staffers at the snake park. 8220;To catch a snake, one has to first know how to behave in front of it. Since snakes cannot hear, they only follow movement. So one should be absolutely still. Non-poisonous snakes are easier to catch. You have to catch them by the head.

8220;Catching the poisonous ones is frightening. A bite can be extremely painful and treatment is expensive. To catch it, you grip the head with a stick. Then you hold its mouth and put it in a basket or gunnybag8221;.

After catching them, Goel looks for the 8220;scales under the scales,8221; where the parasites are found. He puts them in a five to 10 per cent formal in solution. Then, with the help of Bhatt, he identifies them. 8220;I can identify only up to the family level8221;.

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Goel aims to do an in-depth study about the correlation between parasites and the length of the snakes, their habitat, any seasonal variations with this infestation and whether there are any species that are more prone to ticks. This, he feels, is important because snakes can die due to this infestation. So far he has studied up to 12 varieties of snakes. 8220;Generally, a snake has 20 to 25 ticks and I am interested in collecting as many varieties as I can8221;.

Knowledge about his obsession is slowly spreading in the neighbourhood. Every time people in Koregaon Park find a snake in their building, Goel obliges them by catching it. And then begins his search for the 8220;scales under the scales8221;.